Lawrence Block - The Burglar on the Prowl

"This is crazy," he said.

"I'll say it is." To me she said, "He hit on me a few nights ago. I brushed him off, or it would have been my turn to wake up sleeping in the wet spot with my Diamonique earrings nowhere to be found. You came in the night before last, William. Remember? You tried to pick up two girls at once, and I think maybe they switched drinks on you, because you got a fit of the blind staggers and barely made it out the door."

You could see him processing the information. So that's what happened-the bitches had switched drinks with him, and next thing he knew he was coming to in an alley, covered with his own vomit, with his cash and cards gone and an aching groin that only bothered him on days ending in a Y.

And there were people in the room he might have seen before. The brunette, for instance, dressed for success, her hair up. He'd pulled her out of someplace, and it could have been Parsifal's. And even I looked vaguely familiar, like maybe we hung out in some of the same bars. But this chick going on about her necklace and the pictures her cousin stole, he knew damn well he never saw her before in his life.

But I was just guessing. I couldn't really read his mind. For all I knew, he was thinking about super-setting bent-over rows with reverse-grip chins, and what that might do for his lats.

"You went home with her necklace," I said, "not to mention the warm glow that comes from an evening spent doing the Lord's work. And when you woke up you thought about the story she'd told, about a book full of photos of men who'd bought new faces in an effort to keep the past from catching up with them. You figured that kind of information ought to be worth something to the right people, and so you picked up the phone and called your Uncle Mike."

His jaw dropped, but I didn't care if it hit the floor and went through to the basement. I was through with him for now, and turned to Michael Quattrone, who'd been following the proceedings with interest. "Your nephew called you," I said, "and you saw an opportunity. You put the word out, and somebody picked up something about two people named Rogovin in an apartment at Third Avenue and 34th Street."

I'm not sure what my next sentence would have been, but Quattrone stopped me there by raising one well-manicured hand six inches into the air. "You put on a very good show," he said judiciously. "It's instructive and entertaining at the same time."

"Thank you."

"But you've got one thing wrong. My nephew never mentioned anything about Mapes and his photographs."

"You're saying you were unaware of them?"

"I was aware of them," he said. "There's no end of things of which the observant man becomes aware. But I never heard a word on the subject from my nephew." He looked over at Johnson, with something a few degrees cooler than avuncular affection. "My nephew. The son of my younger sister and the man she picked out all by herself and married."

"He didn't call you?"

"I guess he didn't need anything," Quattrone said. "He only calls when he needs something. Money, a lawyer. Something along those lines."

"Uncle Mike-"

"Shut up, Billy." To me he said, "You may have heard of a man named John Mullane."

"The name's familiar."

"He's also known as Whitey Mullane. You watchAmerica's Most Wanted?"

Religiously, hoping I won't see myself on it. " Jersey City," I said. "Or was it Newark? He ran rackets there for years, and at the same time he was working with the FBI. And now he's running away from a murder indictment-"

"Four counts, plus other charges."

"-and they update his profile every few months, and John Walsh says how we need to catch this coward, and they never do."

"And they won't," Quattrone said, "as long as they go on looking for the face he doesn't have anymore, thanks to our friend here." A nod to Mapes. "The man's an idiot, but he does good work. Whitey Mullane was like a father to me, I've known him since I was an altar boy, and I have to tell you, if I hadn't seen the Before picture I wouldn't have known the After picture was him."

"You saw the pictures."

"You know," he said, "I don't recall saying that. As I remember, I spoke a sentence with an 'if' in it."

"So you did. Well, last Wednesday some men paid a call on the Rogovins, or the Lyles, or whatever we want to call them. They overpowered the doorman, left him immobile in the parcel room, and went upstairs, where the Lyles opened the door for them. Then the Lyles opened the safe for them, probably at gunpoint. I don't know why the Lyles got themselves a heavy-duty Mosler safe. They didn't need all that just to provide a short-term home for an outdated college textbook. My guess is it was in conjunction with another enterprise of theirs, and they're dead, so it hardly matters.

"Because the visitors got the book, and in return for their cooperation the Lyles got two bullets in the back of the head. Meanwhile the doorman, wrapped up in duct tape, suffocated. Three people were dead, and the book was gone.

"And wouldn't you know it, even while they were going about their business, the long arm of coincidence was reaching to take me by the collar. It turned itself into the long arm of the law, which I'd call a familiar quotation, even though Bartlett doesn't seem to think so. Here's the coincidence. On the night in question, I was taking the air in the same neighborhood where the Lyles lived and died. Half a dozen different security cameras recorded my passing. It doesn't matter why I was there, I had a perfect right to be there, but coincidentally enough I was once convicted of burglary, and my presence on the scene was enough to induce that gentleman there"-I nodded toward Ray, and they looked at him-"to place me under arrest. And that gentleman there"-I nodded at Wally-"secured my speedy release. But by then the word was out, and people had reason to think I might be involved."

I looked at Michael Quattrone. "If I were to ask you a hypothetical question, do you think it might be possible for you to answer it?"

He smiled without moving his lips. "It might," he said.

"If someone you knew pulled the home invasion on 34th Street," I said, "and if the Lyles let them in and opened the safe for them, why did they have to shoot them?"

"That's easy," he said. "They didn't."

Of course we're speaking hypothetically," Michael Quattrone said. His eyes swept the room, pausing on their way to make brief but significant eye contact with Ray Kirschmann and Wally Hemphill. "And, as we've been reminded, this is not a courtroom. No one's taking down what's being said, and I would hope no one's wearing a wire, but even if there's a record kept, we're speaking hypothetically."

"Of course."

"In that case," he said, "let's suppose a certain person was to learn that an old friend of his had photos of his new face floating around, up for sale to the highest bidder. And suppose he found out where the photos were, and when the bidder was going to show up to finalize the transaction. And suppose he sent some friends of his to show up before the bidder, and shortstop the whole operation."

"Taking the photos by force," I said, "before the other party could arrive to pay for them."

"Something like that," he agreed. "Now, if anything like that happened, I imagine this certain person's friends would have immobilized the doorman, so as to come and go unannounced. And I imagine the people in the apartment-you've been calling them the Lyles-"

"Or the Rogovins. As you prefer."

"Let's call them the Rogovins, then. It's such a stereotype otherwise, isn't it? Criminals with foreign-sounding names that end in a vowel. Like Lyle." Once again he managed to smile without moving his lips. "Let's say Mr. Rogovin heard a knock on the door and opened it, thinking he was about to get rich. A couple of guys came in, and as soon as they opened their mouths he knew they weren't the men he was expecting. But what could he do about it? He opened the safe for them, and they took the book and the money."